Domain name investing is the only game in which you have absolute control over the fate of your investment on a global market.

Many amateur domain name investors are scrambling into the market, hoping to make a high gain from offering just a few domain names for sale on the auctions. This of course is how most of us began, but in the end you will either sink or swim. To become a major domain name player you must first learn the art of buying, selling is considered unpopular among top domain name investors.

So what does it take to make it to the top? Well, first of all it takes guts, and second it takes a vision. Some major domain name players simply wish to conquer a certain market by buying off thousands of domains which will put them in control of demand, and demand controls the price. Slowly feeding these domains back on the market they are almost guaranteed a golden nugget. What do they do with the rest of the thousands of domain names? Just park them and watch the revenue roll in by serving Pay-Per-Click advertisements to the millions of visitors the domains generate each month. An example of such brutal market sweep happened on Monday, Feb. 23 2004 when Thunayan K. AL-Ghanim, widely known as Elequa, owner of one of the worlds largest domain portfolios (containing about 35,000 domains), closed out the last three-letter .info domains. Just 48 hours later he came back and wiped out the entire remaining stock of three-letter .biz domains in one day (approx. 4,600 domains). If you feel like this is your style, several hundred domains will get you into the door, but you will need several thousand to have a seat at the table.

Other domain name players take on a very different game. They treat each domain name as a precious jewel and need only a handful of top-notch domains in their vault to fulfill their appetite. Their goal is to develop each domain into a money-generating cow from scratch. This approach requires just a couple domains that could cost anywhere from just a few thousand dollars up to anywhere close to the million bench-mark (depending on how huge the vision is). Chris Chena, a whiz kid from Paraguay took on this strategy after failing a few times in domain name investments. He went after the finest Spanish domains such as Juegos.com (games in Spanish) and Viajes.com (travel). After successfully developing them, he maintains gold streams of hundreds of thousands dollars in monthly revenues which more than paid for themselves a few times over.

So, lesson learned from the big guns. Become skilled at sustaining a revenue stream from your domain name investments. And when you are ready to grow up, mass register hundreds or even thousands domains, or buy off a few exclusive broad-market domains. Make a goal, and enjoy the game.